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you're saying, basically, that a woman should have complete control on the decision...but what happens if the father wants the baby to live, and the mother chooses an abortion. isnt the mother infringing on that man's rights to that baby...it is because of his sperm that the baby exists after all, and is therefore entitled to decisions about his child's life. what do you propose we do about those situations?
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<p>this is an unfortunate situation that falls into the ambiguity of this abortion issue, but i my stance on this and my proposition, i think, will still be more favorable than the status quo even in light of this. first, remember that my proposition is that the government and politically motivated groups allow abortion in all cases, but encourage people not to by having things like TV ads talking about why they believe that its a bad idea, etc. for instance, in a world in which my proposition is implemented, the government could do things like subsidize foster care centers, reduce the barriers to adoption so that children spend less time in orphanages, and start an education campaign that emphasizes the value of life over the feelings of ownership towards a child. i think that it is this feeling of ownership that leads people to abortion over adoption today - if society were to massively reevaluate what it means to "own" an emotion or to "own up to" a responsibility, we could fundamentally rethink the way we deal with emotions such as guilt that come up in these situations. here's the bottom line - i don't think that people get abortions because they're irresponsible. on the contrary, though this is counterintuitive, i think that many people get abortions because they feel that it is the more responsible thing to do. leaving a child at the mercy of the world can be seen to some, such as myself, as being an irresponsible choice - better to end the potential for life (if a first-trimester fetus can be called that) than to guarantee that a life will definitely come to be and be of a lesser quality than it should have been.</p>
<p>in addition, remember that the fact that man wants the baby, in my view, is exactly what makes this a woman's rights issue. refer to my second long paragraph above - the power of men in sociey to create and destroy life is what perpetuates the dominance of men and inequality in society. think of this as a scale; no one really knows if a baby is a life or not (scientifically speaking, you can justify both), so you don't really know how much morality to weigh there. however, you know for a fact that letting a man decide what a woman does with her body (whether its an abortion or not) perpetuates a very fundamental form of domination. let me put it this way - if a woman wanted to have a child but the father wanted her to have an abortion, wouldn't you agree that it should be the mother's choice?</p>
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second, you cant just call this a women's rights issue. it affects another life (yes a fetus is a life...you dont have to believe its human, but how is it not a living thing???). if it was solely her life...than itd just be her rights. but its not...and you cant only call it women's rights, until you prove that the baby/fetus has no rights that are being affected (which i may point out, has yet to be proved on this board or elsewhere...) yes its her body, but it was also her choice to have sex - and the baby was a result. now she has to take care of that baby. if someone drinks and drives and seriously injures someone, you deal with the consequences... pay for the medical bills, etc...you just dont kill that person to take care of the problem. so you cant just kill the baby/fetus to take care of the problem.
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<p>first, refer to my paragraph directly above - on a scale, as an objective decision maker, this should be a woman's rights issue. on one hand you have a probablistic scenario to judge on (is a first-trimester fetus a life, and if so, to what extent), whereas on the other hand you have a very definite and tangible consequence. second, weigh consequences here - remember, in a world in which my proposition is implemented, every woman would have the ABILITY to get an abortion, but very few would. this means that there would only be relatively few abortions per year, but woman would effectively gain a voice in gender politics in a way in which they never have before.</p>
<p>third, as far as the woman bearing responsibility because it was her choice to have sex, i answered this too. remember that men have always had the power to avoid an unwanted baby - they can just walk away. abortion is the factor that equalizes the scales in terms of sexual and social power. if an unwanted pregnancy is a mutal responsibility, there should be ways for both of the people to just not deal with it if they don't want to. not doing so results in the subjugation of women.</p>
<p>think about it - most abortions don't happen in family situations. they are performed on single, unwed mothers who have no husband figure to speak of. in addition, statistically speaking, unwanted pregnancies have dropped by 70% in the last 30 years. this is a direct result of abortions, and not any of the abstinence-before-marriage campaigns that we've seen in the last few decades (which, statistically speaking, have failed spectacularly - polls show that more americans have sex before marriage than ever before).</p>
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dont get me wrong - im impressed at the amount of responsibility you take for this issue as a guy. but may i point out, that the people who are most in agreement with your arguments are the probably the same people who if you were arguing the other side of the issue would probably tell you to shut up cause your a guy and you just dont understand. so i would like to know whats with the twofaced side of people...if they're for your cause, you cheer for the guys...if they're for the opposition, you discredit their claims???
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<p>it's very disappointing that society at large believes that, as a guy, i shouldn't be concerned about this issue. assuming that i should share the view of the mainstream masculine gender stereotype is exactly the kind of mentality that perpetuates gender/sexual inequality. think of it this way - saying that its surprising that i acknowledge the abuses of power by masculinity is essentially the same thing as someone saying that they're surprised that a woman was actually willing to stand up for herself or do anything with her life other than be a housewife. i consider myself a feminist. people find this odd because, as a heterosexual male, they expect me to be both an advocate of masculinity and a heterocentrist. i'm neither; i'm an advocate of gender equality, which subsumes both women's and gay rights. i consider myself to be what Antonio Gromsci calls an organic intellectual.</p>
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once again you never have to agree with what i say. theyre my opinions, and like yours, they'll never change. im just tired of people claiming that its unfair to women that they cant get an abortion. what gives you the right to take another's life? you sound just like the people who say they got in trouble for a crime cause of their race...and then if they get punished they claim the people are prejudice against them, and if they were the same as them it never wouldve happened and its just so unfair. you do the crime, you do the punishment. you have sex, you get pregnant, you have the baby. if men had babies i'd still be against abortion...its not a matter of being a girl or a guy - its a matter of it being wrong, and taking someone's life. and thats all i have to say about that.
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<p>let me pose the question to you this way - do you think abortions would happen in a society in which women weren't ostracized for having children out of wedlock? the answer is probably, but not nearly as much as it happens today. so i think that your arguments about blaming social conditions for situations like abortion is fundamentally flawed (both in the instance of gender and in the instance of race, but that's another discussion). i think that its gender inequality that makes abortion as prevalent as it is today. the reason why men are far less pro-abortion than women is because, in the case of an unwanted pregnancy, they dont' suffer nearly as many social consequences as women do.</p>
<p>sex in society is an inevitable issue. the purpose of policymakers in society (and us, as the new generation of activists and politicians) is not to oppose ideas on principle but to look for effective, pragmatic solutions. there is no point crying over the spilled milk that is premartial sex; we need to look for an effective solution to the systemic problem of unwanted pregnancy.</p>
<p>and for the record, i have some very unconventional reservations about abortion that i'd be happy to elaborate on if asked (unconventional because they're not rooted in the concept of life or in religion).</p>